The shaman meet up: Canibehealz

An interview

Dorelei: ‘Something special happens when a conversation takes places between two people that barely know each other, but share a great passion for the same thing. I had a chat with Canibehealz about our common interest: resto shamans.’

Sunwell

It was during the Sunwell that two friends, a mage and a warlock, decided to level alts. The warlock said he wanted to level a tank, and the mage wanted to heal. The warlock created a warrior tank, the mage created a resto shaman. They were named: Can-I-be-tankz and Can-I-be-healz.

About

Chadd is a 27 year old (resto) Shaman from Ontario Canada, called Canibehealz. After 3,5 years with the horde guild ‘Last Word’ on Ner’Zhul (US), he recently joined the alliance guild ‘Temerity’ on Windrunner (US). As Last Word had stopped raiding, the members spent one more memorable Blizzcon together before calling it quits this year. Currently, Chadd is 13/13 mythic and loves DPS ranking as a resto shaman.

Canibehealz in the Maloriak encounter.

When did you start playing WoW?

Nine years ago, last month. Before I started playing WoW, I played a lot of Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I was a Blizzard fan before WoW had even been released. But when it came out, I didn’t have a personal computer. All we had was a family PC. My friends were playing, but by the time I got my own PC, they had already quit. I stuck with the game, and spent my time questing. I enjoyed the lore massively and WoW felt like this super large story to be told. It wasn’t until end of The Burning Crusade that I got interested in the end game.

How did you end up playing a shaman?

I was always playing ‘the wizard’ in games like Diablo and Dungeons and Dragons. I loved throwing magic spells. My first character was an undead mage. It blew my mind that I could run around basically being a zombie. I didn’t start playing a shaman until the second wing of ICC was unlocked. I played my mage foremostly, and had tried a few other classes. My best friend said: ‘We need a healer!’. During Sunwell times we had created our tank/healer alt combo: Canibetankz and Canibehealz. I leveled my shaman, they got me straight into Ulduar and right into active healing. I’ve been chain healing ever since. I fell in love with the class and spec. From the week I quit playing my mage, until a month before Dragon Soul came out, I didn’t play my mage again. I just loved my shaman so much.

What shaman specs do you play most actively?

Resto and elemental mostly. When I joined Temerity, I applied as both specs. They said: ‘We’re glad you can play both’. So that’s what I have been doing. The last time I played enhancement was in Siege of Orgrimmar. Since Dragon Soul, I have at least been DPS on one progress fight.

What do you focus on in WoW at the moment?

Aside from clearing mythic each week, I participate in a community driven event. Our Open Raid group is 5 mythic right now. My biggest thing in WoW right now is resto damage rankings. When there’s nothing to heal, you either overheal or DPS. A lot of resto shamans don’t use even fire elemental, let alone their full damage toolkit. However, I think maximizing healer damage is very important. Especially in a progression environment.

Canibehealz

I got to know your around the internet, talking about shamans. Where are you active, and what are you working on right now?

Mostly Twitter, is where I hold up. I love social media. It’s the greatest possible way to communicate between people nowadays. Twitter is the number one place to find me and I’m always there. And then there’s (of course) MMO Champion. I stopped participating in discussions for now, but I still view the shaman forums. You can always poke me on Discord – I’m just hanging out over there. In my previous guild (Last Word), I had a place to share my thoughts. I would write on their website. People may be familiar with the BiS List I made during the early days of Hellfire Citadel. Since Last Word stopped, my blog is my new outlet. It’s slow going. I work 5-6 days a week, and raid for 4 days.

What has been the most aweful changes made to shamans in your opinion?

Most changes to the class have been for the better. Cleansing totem was absolutely broken. If they would have kept it in the game, you would have just had one shaman in the raid all the time. Just to take care of the poison debuffs. One of the spells I’ve been missing is unleashing your healing rain. It made both spells worth it. The value of healing rain has gone down since they removed this option. The value of unleash would have completely disappeared if it wasn’t for the sprint they attached to it. I miss this, two spells were lowered in value.

What has been one of the best changes made to shamans in your opinion?

Probably the reworking of the totem system. They made them from passive elements into miniature cooldowns. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the class, and revitalized my interest to play the class. I really enjoy the micro management of riptide, elemental blast, healing stream totem and healing rain. Totems as miniature cooldowns instead of ‘stat sticks’. I’m glad totems became a cooldown thing.

What advice would you give the noob version of yourself, back in the day?

Get the damn healing mace from Ulduar, haha! I never got one back in the day. Honestly, I don’t think I would ever do anything differently. I went up in the ranks since ICC until now, never made a backwards movement. No matter what, I just kept improving.

Canibehealz in the Archimonde encounter.

Let’s put it differently then. Would you mind sharing a somewhat shameful fail as a resto shaman with us :D?

I screw up stuff like projecting spirit link all the time. Hitting projection before dropping my spirit link, and then sort of wipe the raid as a consequence. I have reincarnated and died in less than 0.3 seconds. When I first started playing, I spent a lot of time in ghost wolf. I would get disoriented and just sit for a second in ghost wolf and move again. Always be casting! As a goblin (only a short time), I goblin-jumped off the Ragnaros platform one time. Oh, and I got lost on the level 10 totem quest..

What makes a healer ‘good’?

When Last Word stopped raiding, someone told me: ‘You’re a good healer, because you can analyze a situation and quickly make a decision on how to handle it’. Aside from the compliment, I do believe that’s a big component of what healing is. Part of that is the spell selection, knowing which spell to use when.

How do you feel about what has been announced so far about Legion?

As someone who enjoys the lore aspect of Wow, I love it! I’m super excited to fight the legion. The speculation about all the different characters and how we are going to obtain the artifacts.. I’m absolutely thrilled. As far as the shaman announcements goes, I’m happy about the totem changes.

If you want to follow Canibehealz in his wanderings around Azeroth and beyond, you can find him in many places. Be sure to follow him on twitter @Canibehealz, say hi to him on the Discord “Earthshrine” server, or check his latest written thoughts on his blog: canibeblogz.wordpress.com.

Thanks Razorcrab :D! It was loads of fun making this interview at least :P.

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3 years ago

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Nephelae

#420

Very nice interview 😀 Canibehealz <3

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3 years ago

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Canibehealz

#422

<3

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3 years ago

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Shammyspice

#418

I love the concept of dps ranking as resto. I’ve always been the type of toss out dps spells here and there during downtime, but I never really considered ranking that way to be an option. I think I might have to start focusing more on that with some of our farm bosses, seeing that we usually run healer heavy anyway…

I’ll definitely get you a follow on Twitter. I stream my guild raids Tues/Wed/Thurs 7-10:30pm, mostly just for fun but also to extend my network of other fellow resto shamans or healers in general, really! It seems like healers have really come out of the woodwork this expansion, from what I’ve noticed.

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3 years ago

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Canibehealz

#421

I also happen to stream our raids, whenever I’m feeling up to it. I’ve been sick and moving lately, but you can find me at /Canibehealz on twitch too.

Dps ranking as a healer usually involves some cheesing but even without that it’s always important to maximize damage. It comes with two great benefits in a raidifferent setting. 1) You’re helping to contribute even during downtime in healing. 2) Dps spells are free for Shamans so it’s a regen period for us as we are not spending mana on heals.

Glad I could help open up other possibilities for you to keep yourself engaged in healer, and more importantly shaman, game play. 🙂

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3 years ago

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Shammyspice

#424

I’ve been playing/raiding as a resto shaman for going on 9 years now, so it’s good to keep things interesting for sure lol.

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